America does not have a Command and Control, Air Battle Management (C2ABM) problem because it lacks ideas. It has a C2ABM problem because it has tolerated industrial drift for too long.
That is what makes Mobilize: How to Reboot the American Industrial Base and Stop World War III so relevant to the air battle management fight. Shyam Sankar and Madeline Hart argue that America’s problem is not simply that it buys too little, but that it has allowed the link between innovation, production, and deterrence to weaken. At Hudson Institute, Sankar described the need to resurrect the American industrial base, win the defense technology race, and prevent a larger war. In their launch essay for the book, Sankar and Hart argue that the United States allowed its industrial base to atrophy over decades, weakening deterrence and leaving Washington unable to build the best systems fast enough and in sufficient numbers.
Mobilizing C2ABM
Apply that logic to C2ABM, and the conclusion is straightforward. The United States should stop treating air battle management as a niche support function or a single procurement fight. It should treat it as a mobilization problem. That means aircraft, radars, radios, software, shelters, generators, spares, repair kits, and deployable sustainment packages, plus the industrial capacity to produce and replace all of it at speed. If Washington is serious about deterring great power war, then C2ABM cannot remain a boutique enterprise built around scarce, aging aircraft and thin replacement pipelines.
The E-7 Wedgetail is the clearest example. The Air Force said in 2022 that the E-7 was the only platform capable of meeting Department of Defense requirements for tactical air battle management, command and control, and moving-target indication within the timeframe required to replace the E-3. Yet the program still drifted into hesitation. The the President’s Budget Request for FY 2026 eliminated the E-7 program and framed the fight over Wedgetail as a live political and strategic question rather than a settled acquisition issue. Congress later pushed the program forward again in March 2026 through major contract actions. That is precisely the kind of behavior Mobilize warns against. If a capability is operationally necessary, then the burden should shift from rearguing its need to building it faster, fielding it in numbers, and sustaining it with a real industrial tail.
The same logic applies on the ground. Air & Space Forces Magazine reported in April 2025 that the Air Force accepted its first TPY-4 radar from Lockheed Martin and that the service ultimately plans to buy 35 of them to replace the AN/TPS-75 in its Control and Reporting Centers. That radar matters because C2ABM recapitalization should not mean just one airplane buy. It should mean rebuilding the entire chain that enables control, including new radars, expeditionary command kits, resilient radios, support equipment, and sustainment packages procured as a family of priorities.
That broader point is exactly what C2 Coord contributors have been arguing. In August 2025, “Grinder” Hebert wrote that the future fight will require far more than replacing one platform with another. It will require air battle managers who can operate layered voice and datalink architectures, manage long-range kill chains, and work around the limited fielding of next-generation C2 kits such as Tactical Operations Center Light. “Opie” Foulk made a related point the next month, arguing that high-end conflict will require C2ABM platforms to manage aircraft recovery using radar, Link 16, secure UHF, SATCOM, chat relay, airfield status tools, and logistics awareness to sustain combat power over time. He specifically argued that effective C2 of egress and recovery may be one of the most important functions C2ABM crews execute in a peer fight. That is not a side issue. It is the sustainment-and-modernization problem in plain English. Buying hardware without building the human and technical infrastructure around it is not recapitalization. It is a delay disguised as progress.
Case Studies
Recent combat should have ended the abstract debate. In March 2026, Air & Space Forces Magazine reported that a key U.S. Air Force E-3 AWACS was destroyed in the Iranian strike on Prince Sultan Air Base, and a follow-on report said reviewed imagery showed severe damage, with essentially the aircraft’s entire rear section destroyed. Whatever final label one uses for the airframe, the strategic lesson is obvious. Adversaries understand that airborne air battle management assets are high-value, scarce, difficult to replace, and central to joint force operations. A mobilization mindset would respond accordingly. It would not treat air battle management aircraft as precious peacetime assets to be slowly recapitalized over years of hesitation. It would treat them as wartime necessities whose numbers, survivability, repair base, and replacement pipeline must improve now.
The Australian Wedgetail deployment to the Gulf makes the same point in a different way. In March 2026, Australia deployed an E-7A to the Gulf at the request of Gulf nations to help protect civilians and provide long-range reconnaissance to secure the region’s airspace. That mattered because the theater was not empty. The United States already had airborne warning and control capabilities in or around the broader fight, including E-3 and Navy E-2 capacity. Yet Australia still sent the E-7, and ministers later said it made a significant contribution. The practical message is hard to miss. In real operations, even with other airborne warning and control assets already available, militaries still judged the E-7 worth deploying. Not because it was another airplane in the stack, but because it was a better, more relevant capability for the mission at hand.
Lt. Gen. David Deptula recently made a related argument in Forbes through the lens of the Doolittle Raid. He wrote that if the nation is serious about deterring great-power war and winning one if it comes, then rebuilding the Air Force is no longer optional. That is exactly the right frame for C2ABM. The lesson of the Doolittle Raid was not just courage. It was urgency, adaptation, and the willingness to build and employ what the moment required. America did not get through World War II by treating industrial capacity as someone else’s problem. It aligned strategy, production, and operational needs. C2ABM deserves that same seriousness now.
Modernizing the Defense Industrial Base
That is also why the administration’s recent industrial rhetoric matters. In April 2025, the White House argued that incentivizing domestic automobile production was a national security issue because stronger U.S. vehicle production reduces reliance on foreign manufacturing and strengthens the defense industrial base. More recently, Reuters reported that the Pentagon had approached Ford, GM, GE Aerospace, and Oshkosh to explore expanding weapons production and supplementing traditional defense contractors. Whether that effort expands or not, the instinct is right. America should be thinking about automakers, heavy industry, commercial electronics firms, and advanced manufacturers as part of a broader arsenal of democracy.
For C2ABM, that means four things. First, buy the E-7 in meaningful numbers and stop treating it as a reluctant concession. Second, accelerate the fielding of new ground-based sensors, such as the TPY-4, and connect them to more mobile air battle management nodes. Third, treat radios, datalinks, shelters, power, spares, repair packages, and deployable sustainment as core parts of the capability, not afterthoughts. Fourth, widen the supplier base. If Washington can imagine automakers and commercial firms helping build defense equipment, then it should also imagine them helping produce shelters, mobility kits, generators, trailers, wiring harnesses, circuit cards, and other unglamorous but indispensable pieces of C2ABM capacity.
Conclusion
The larger point is simple. The United States does not merely need better C2ABM concepts. It needs the industrial means to field them before a war, sustain them during a war, and replace losses in a war. That is the deeper insight of Mobilize, and it is the right lens for air battle management. If Washington wants to prevent a larger war, then it should start acting as if the ability to see, sort, direct, and connect the joint force is not a support function, but a strategic necessity backed by factories, supply chains, and production lines.
C2ABM should not be the last thing America mobilizes. It should be one of the first.
Col Grant “SWAT” Georgulis, USAF, is a Master Air Battle Manager and currently assigned as the Deputy Chief of C2 Inspections as part of the Headquarters NORAD and NORTHCOM Inspector General team. He most recently finished a year-long Air Force National Defense Fellowship at The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies for the academic year 2024-2025. He entered the Air Force in 2007 through the ROTC program at Texas State University–San Marcos. SWAT has served on a combatant command component staff, was an Air Force Weapons School instructor, and graduated from the Naval War College’s College of Naval Command and Staff and Air University’s School of Advanced Air and Space Studies. He previously commanded an E-3G Squadron, the 965 Airborne Air Control Squadron, at Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Air Force, Department of Defense, or U.S. government.
Photo by Mike Van Schoonderwalt on Pexels
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